From bilodeau@iucf.indiana.edu Fri Jul 28 10:01:17 2000 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id KAA128290 for ; Fri, 28 Jul 2000 10:01:16 -0700 Received: from cyclops.iucf.indiana.edu (cyclops.iucf.indiana.edu [129.79.151.120]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id KAA25298 for ; Fri, 28 Jul 2000 10:01:15 -0700 Received: from eris.iucf.indiana.edu (eris.iucf.indiana.edu [129.79.151.131]) by cyclops.iucf.indiana.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1/2.iucf) with ESMTP id MAA19845 for ; Fri, 28 Jul 2000 12:01:11 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost (bilodeau@localhost) by eris.iucf.indiana.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1/2p.iucf) with ESMTP id MAA27527 for ; Fri, 28 Jul 2000 12:01:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 12:01:07 -0500 (EST) From: Doug Bilodeau To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: pitch - later Greek grammarian - fifths/sixths In-Reply-To: <39819CA6.9C014007@charm.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Diana Wright wrote: > I cannot help with Greek pitch, but the Yoruba [Nigeria] I learned as a > child has three tones, plus rising and falling connections. The > intervals are very close to a fourth, if you are pronouncing individual > words, but that shifts somewhat in conversation with speaker and > situation. I suspect such alteration is common in tonal languages. > It has always seemed likely to me that ancient grammarians would describe the pronunciation of words in an overly conceptualized way -- as one might say them slowly to someone learning the language -- but that in rapid colloquial speech the patterns would be much more complex and variable. Could anyone recommend books on the general subject of use of pitch variation in languages (something I'm curious about)? Doug Bilodeau Indiana University Cyclotron Facility 2401 Milo B. Sampson Lane Bloomington, IN 47408 USA .